Unending Appetite: Mini-Review Rampage #6

Although I have managed to cause a significant dent in the Beast that is my backlog of things to review, it still remains strong. Thus I soldier on, maintain a brave facade despite my trembling within, and continue to do what must be done. Be warned: the following set contains much more raw emotion that the previous few installment.

You have been warned.

Unstoppable: Mini-Review Rampage #3

So being summer, I find myself without any way to "productively" spend my time (emphasis added by parents) which results in a majority of my time still be spent in the consumption of media, which once again means I have a large back-log of things I've watched and want to write down my thoughts of.

I keep saying I'll make some posts that aren't reviews... but then I keep losing the motivation. I still have high hopes, though. Until then, though, enjoy my opinions on the following ten works. Pictures provided for your visual pleasure!

Searching for a Thread: In which Blake makes a Top Ten List

So I recently finished watching FLCL, and when talking to people about how much I liked it. At one point I made the claim "It's not in my top 10--er, well at least not in the top 5" or something very similar to that. This caused me to start considering where my opinions on things actually stood in relation to one another. I mean naturally I prefer things more than others, but I had never really sat down and though what things were absolutely my favorites. It would be hard with things like books and movies, since the sheer amount of things I've read and watched at this point means just compiling a list in the first place would be a lot of effort.

However, I realized if I restrict myself purely to Japanese media, my job gets a lot easier. I thought it might be fun to make a top 10 list of manga, movies, and anime that I've enjoyed over the last few years, partially because I can and partially to see if I can discern any underlying threads why I like certain things.

A couple disclaimers. The first is I left out videogames on purpose. For one, I approach them a lot differently than I do other forms of entertainment, and in addition adding in videogames would add a looooot of titles to the list; for instance, on my desk I have 16 DS games, of which 14 are Japanese in origin.
The second disclaimer is that the following list only comprises series that I've completely finished. There are quite a number of works that I either gave up, couldn't finish since I didn't have access, or the series themselves have yet to come to a conclusion (such as Broken Blade, Hellsing, Hani-kimi, Wallflower, Bleach, etc).

Anyway, without further ado!

What About My Star: A Review of Macross Frontier: The False Songstress

As mentioned in the last post, today I was finally able to sit down and watch Macross Frontier: The False Songstress, the first MF movie. It was billed as a synopsis of the show with a significant amount of new animation, with a second film coming next year and serving as a sequel to the show. With these expectations in mind, and a positive review from Rome (who had watched it a few days prior) Max and I set out to see what if it was all it was cracked up to be.

[Many spoilers for the original series after the jump]

It's Long, Long Goodbye: A Review of (Rewatching) Macross Frontier

Although I only watched Macross Frontier for the first time last November, the fact that it almost instantly became one of my favorite series got me to convince Emma that she wanted to watch it this summer, so I find myself about 3/4 year later having finished watching the show for the second time, and figured I should post my impressions of the show again.

In short, the show lost none of its brilliance in a rewatching. The art is still fantastic, the characters deep, the music mesmerizing, and the story compelling. The only complaint I could possibly think of on the first watching was that the show takes about 10 episodes to really get going (but once it does it never stops, in a good way) and while that remains, it's a small price to pay for an outstanding series, and it remains the only flaw.